Strange Aeons
by Fingolfin 2nd
Summary: Three factions fight for control of a planet, while an unstoppable power that has waited eleven thousand years approaches to burn them all
1. chapter 1

[9 106 945.M30]

In the hellish thing men call the Warp, a mighty imperial barge, bigger than a small city and crewed by hundreds if not thousands of men and women, moved. It travelled unimaginable distances at inconceivable speeds, and was protected from the murderous intents of the Warp's demons by impenetrable shields.

However, that which is built against the half-things of the Warp is good against little else. Something passed through the shields into the relative haven of the barge.

The crew numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands.

Within an hour, it numbered none.

[9 658 989.M30]

With a blaze of light, the ruins of an imperial barge burned into realspace, many lightyears from the nearest solar system, with great slabs of metal carved from its sides. This was clearly the work of demons, yet if a seer of the Eldar race was to comb the ship with their sharpest witchsight, they would not find one mote of chaos energy left on the ship. Nor would they find a single heartbeat, such as they might find in a band of heros who had managed the impossible task of sealing a breach. Across the entire ship, there was no sign of any form of life.

When it left the warp the ship was moving ever so slightly. Then, against all reason and over several minutes, the vessel stopped and became utterly still.

Next it started to turn, at first unnoticably but gaining speed, and was again drawn to a total stop once to was facing the nearest planet with any form of inhabitants. This turning took most of a day.

Finally, horrifyingly, the dead ship flew again. Within a decade or so, it had reached speeds of hundreds of miles a second and not once had it had any reason to move at all.

The was no apparent life on the barge, but if you looked with something far more piercing than any witchsight, and if you knew exactly where to look, you would find many things to see. Among others, you would find a razor malic, a burning intelligence and an unrivalled power, but above all else you would find an unfathomable amount of time; age and memory beyond any mortal right. All these things were resting, lying in a single thing which must be called a being.

And that is not dead which can eternal lie.


	2. factions

In the vast expanse of the void, there was once a young and hopeful world named Algine. The same planet still exists, orbiting the same sun on the same path with astronomical alterations over the same billion year cycles. The name of the planet, and the life thereon, have changed irreversibly, but the ancient world cares little for the lives and thoughts of men.

This world could be thought of as a good place to live, when taken against the nightmarish homes of most imperial citizens, and in many ways it is. After the planet was cut off from others via the Warpstorms of the age of strife, it's colony fell back towards an older age like many others, but unlike those the people of Algine slowly began to ascend again. They marched past the chaos of the dark ages in a golden age of technology, fuelled by the echos of faded memories and the desire for a better future. Over time, by luck and little else, the planet's population of psykers were reduced to legends, ultimately shielding the world from the eyes of chaos.

But no luck can last eternal. As the people of Algine slowly reached out into the stars, the stars clawed at them and an unseen rot began to spread. One day, which by the records of the imperium would be listed as 9 200 895.M4, the planet was struck by six objects from beyond its solar system. On investigation, no debris were found, but eight members of the search team were found unconscious with no memory of their attacker. Twelve others were found dead.

The alien threat had arrived, invisible and hungry.

More obviously, in 9 637 934.M41, the planet was discovered by the imperium. A mighty battleship burst out of the warp a mere few hundred miles from the planet. This soon lead to war.

The unseen aliens, the imperial army and the planet's population itself. Each was staring solely at the others. Non noticed the fourth faction.

Another imperial battleship sailed into the solar system. It's speed had been reduced by the asteroid field it had travelled through, the hundreds of impacts ravaging the ship's hull and robbing it off energy. But not once, not one time in over eleven thousand years, did the dead ship truly stop.


	3. Giants among men

Most land on Algine is controlled by the Over-monarchy, a group formed when all but two of the various royal families on the planet decided to merge their power and land, leaving the resulting Kingdom as a single global superpower. The Over-monarchy is ruled by whichever member of the over-monarchs holds the most support.

This support can take the form of wealth or military power, both of which any notable over-monarch will hold a considerable amount, but mostly transpires as a pledge of loyalty from anyone, monarch or otherwise. The system for determining which over-Prince or over-Princess holds the most support is non-existent, so to become the Over-king or Over-Queen a candidate would have to be practically unopposed. This requires an extraordinary individual; exceedingly skilled, universally liked and quite unreasonably lucky. When no majority is universally clear, the Over-monarchy is coordinated - not ruled - by a council.

This council currently numbers 5; Over-Princesses Toryol and Ranceada and Over-Princes Marquis, Oberan and Verata.

The council members meet in the capital city of the over-monarchy; Bornorck. Unbeknownst to them, the rot has began to spread.

The City had long had an underground train system. So long, in fact, that the vast majority of the network was lost to the world of light and life. Despite this, there is life here. A sick and twisted and hateful life, but still life. An all seeing eye would not miss the similarities between the life in tunnels and a tapeworm fit for a city.

Death is an inevitable consequence of life.

Here, life is an unfortunate requirement for death.

Every day in these tunnels, people die. It started suddenly and didn't stop. Now, hundreds are missing, vanished without a trace from all over the city. Their fate is unknown. That is, their fate is unknown to the general populace. The individuals themselves are quite aware of their fates, though they might rather they weren't.

Due to the massive number of abductions, any patterns are buried beneath the weight of the gruesome majority. No one noticed the political opposition.

No one noticed the lost religious leaders who opposed the new cult.

No one heard the screams.

No one but the under-king.

The alien threat.

The Brood Lord.

throughout the Colexus campaign, captain Noxioun led dozens of brutal massacres against the cultists of Nurgle. His battle plans were simple; divide, and slaughter. He struck behind enemy lines, taking full advantage of the speed of the vessels under his command to gut the enemy army without their main force ever seeing his flagship. The world was on the brink of turning into a literal hellscape, but for captain Noxioun, each day was another reason to love his job.

Then the world turned into a literal hellscape.

Everything Burns.

Noxioun escaped the fires with three ships; his flagship and two smaller frigates. Once clear of the new daemon world, the reduced fleet entered the warp. Once they had, they made the shocking discovery that their navigator had gone insane.

At last, after time unknown, the ship erupted in a new solar system like an a supernova. Noxioun sighted a human civilisation on a new planet, and made to claim or in the name of the God-Emperor. With nothing left to lose, the ravaged might and enduring hate of an imperial fleet was brought to against the planet long before the captain bothered to check if the planet had a name.

Then, there was the other...


	4. Day 1, Part 1

Another ship traveling through the void. A different one. A live one. It seemed; as much as an incomprehensibly gargantuan mass of alloys can seem anything; angry. And, with such colossal amounts of mass, that's a lot of anger. somewhere on the ship, there are navigators, bearers of the third eye. Each of them are now insane.

Elsewhere in the dreadnought, a man laments at his own misfortune and failures, unsure which was the greater cause. Soon, his despair turns to anger, which fuels the same blood drive which has claimed countless cities in the name of the man's corpse God. He looks to this new planet, and plans to bring it to war.

But the war didn't start on Algine. It started beneath it.

A dozen human figures were being rushed by a great many figures whose humanity ended around the fourth arm. A dozen gun barrels flashed and some of the creatures erupted in blood, but the rest were just a few seconds away. Then, there was the scrape of metal.

Where once there had been the form of the leading monster, there was now most of the leading monster accompanied by an unpleasant sound as something important fell to the floor.

Just in front of that stood Over-Prince Marquis, holdings an extremely elegant, bloody and - above all - sharp sword. In his other hand, he held a smoking pistol, and his face was twisted into a disturbing half-smile.

The aliens dived towards him, but he seemed to dissapate before them. A space seemed to form a few bodies into the horde, from which Marquis emerged in a tempest of pain. As the humans fired into the backs of the creatures, the Over-Prince sank into a brutal rhythm and began to mutter under his breath.

'Leg, arm, arm, head, arm...' As he listed each piece, there was a screech as the corresponding bodypart was cut of, slashed open, run through or all three at once. A roar of metal echoed as the other humans fired into the dense swarm around the Over-Prince, cutting it in half. Marquis pushed back the few bodies who had unintentionaly shielded him from the fire, then dived beneath the second hail a split-second before it impacted into the remaining monsters. A shredding of unnatural flesh, then the silence of the eviscerated.

The cavern loomed over the humans.

Marquis seemed to rotate 90 degrees, traversing from lying down to standing upright without ever appearing to be anywhere in between.

As he did, it was suddenly clear to all who were present why some called him the crooked Prince. He stood with a slight one-sided hunch, and he often tilted his head unconsciously, emphasising the deformation in his form. His face was similarly marred: it could, very nearly, be called handsome, but many subtle features came together to give it a basic ugliness, and a sharpness that almost cut the eye. His eyes were sharper still, and at times seemed like two razors, which nonetheless gleamed with a mix between animal cunning and human paranoia.

He turned to the group behind him with a flourish of his sword, sniffing the air. That couldn't have been all of the monsters.

"Everyone, search and destroy." The group splintered into two, with one team taking one of the two passageways other than the one through which they had entered. Marquis returned to the floor, sitting, the counted each of the fallen beasts. Once he had done this, he rested his head on his hands and retraced the past hour of his life in his mind.


End file.
